A more-active version of the Oftener Right move
So the oftener right move reads:
Oftener right: when a character comes to you for advice, tell them what you honestly think the best course is. If they do it, they take +1 to any rolls they make in the doing, and you mark an experience circle.
The downside to this is you have to passively wait for people to come to you for advice. I’d love it if it were possible to make this more active. Simply saying “when you offer advice” wouldn’t work, because it could easily become an annoying XP exploit that could break the game.
What do you think? Has anyone achieved this?
I feel like maybe one of the playbooks from The Sprawl did this a little better, but I cannot remember which
Hamish Cameron?
Hmm. Soldier has these two:
Steady presence: When you give someone a pep talk while in a stressful situation, you help them as if you had rolled 10+.
Here’s the plan: When you plan a Mission, everyone to whom you assign a task takes +1 ongoing while they act on that task according to the plan. Anyone who rolls a miss or goes off the plan loses their bonus for that mission. If you get paid, mark experience.
I think oftener right is in the DNA of both.
I would start with “when you offer advice”, add some thematically appropriate restrictions, and playtest. It does require two players to collaborate to make it an XP exploit, so with appropriate fictional restrictions in the trigger, that could certainly do the job.
e.g. Xenopsychologist: When you offer well intentioned advice about an alien species to a crewmate, tell them honestly what you think the best course is. If they act on your advice, they take +1 to any rolls they make in the doing, and you mark an experience circle.
for oftener right I would like to see an extra sentence like: “remind others about this often”.
Hamish Cameron – This is for the Dwarf in Demihumans, so I was thinking of something like:
When you offer unwelcome advice in a high-handed fashion….
I worried that “unwelcome” would be too mushy, but I’m leaning that way.
The Seeker has something like that in The Veil:
GUIDANCE: When you share your vision of the future and how you plan to achieve it, roll+Enlightenment. On a 10+, Hold 3 over them. On a 7–9, Hold 2 over them. Whenever you like, you can spend your Hold, 1 for 1, to have them mark experience when they do something to further your vision.
Oh, there’s some good stuff you could do with the mechanical part of the move to give the “unwelcome advice” teeth.
I wonder if the Pusher’s vision thing might also be relevant.
Maybe zero in on the “unwelcome” and make it more specific: “advice that will cause harm”? “advice that goes against their bests interests”?
“If they take the advice, they mark XP and take +1 ongoing. If the advice results in harm to the character, you also mark xp.”
Fraser Simons – That’s super-sleek. It’s a lot more powerful, too, though.
I wonder if it’s like: Roll, expend your hold to either mark XP or succeed on helping. Hmm.
Hamish Cameron – I love that a lot, that +1ongoing to help, mark XP if you’re hurt. Being hurt is an obvious and good one but maybe not quite right for the Dwarf. Maybe something like:
The Dwarf will give you advice that will work, but will cost you dearly. If you follow the advice, you gain +1forward for acting on it. If it costs you something: gear, gold, important relationships, or human antipathy for the enclave, mark XP.
The Others actually has a lot of moves that play around with this — particularly check out the Provider, the Minister, and the Old Timer
docs.google.com – the-others
Hollyworld has this:
Pointed Monologue: Name something cynical or naive that you believe, and write it here.
“At the end of the day, ________________________________________.”
When you get someone to internalize it, mark experience. If you stop believing it, write something else and deny you wrote the first thing.
Robert Bohl yeah it’s more of a mentor/mentee relationship for that playbook and the constraints of the other parts of the playbook balance it out so that in play it’s the kind of scene that probably only happens once and the hold distributed in really powerful, poignant moments, typically. Stripped from the playbook it would need some counterbalance or reworking of the move text, for sure.
It’s in the Watch. The Owl has a weaponized version cald Told You So
Pretty sure there is a Bear version but the PDF is being an asshole and not loading on my phone
I’ll check out my PDFs and hope they aren’t being assholes! Thanks, Anna!
Those are two really interesting moves, Anna. So, the Bear one seems to potentially be that XP exploit, where it’s a thing that you’re initiating. It has to be a military order, that’s the color constraint. Do you find that that mitigates the XP exploit problem, or that it never/rarely crops up?
The Owl one is so good I might borrow from it. “If you listen to me you bump result category” is really cool. And I like that the roller decides if it goes off.
It actually makes me want to rewrite the rule significantly so it’s like honor instruction instead of advice. Quick and dirty:
When you provide instruction to a Company member on the honorable and wise course to approach a problem or challenge, roll+Serene. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9 hold 1. Whenever she acts honorably and wisely in furtherance of the goal you suggested, you may spend 1 hold to:
• turn a miss into a mixed hit or
• turn a mixed hit into a hit.
If you provide this advice to a Demiurge character, on a hit, he will heed your advice.
On a miss [something].
I like that a lot.
From a never-completed hack’s Exile playbook:
Mentor: When a character comes to you for advice, tell them what you honestly think the best course is. Both of you gain +1Hx with each other. If they do it, they take +1 to any rolls they make in the doing, and you mark an experience circle. If they end up /dying/, /broken/, /terminal/, or are taken down by their threats while following your advice, take 2-psyche harm.
Still much more passive than what you’re talkin about, but it entangled the two characters a bit more, and incentivized the Exile to ensure the person they advised made it through ok.
From my current project (paraphrased): When somebody comes to you for support you can offer them advice…. (mechanics of the move).
The idea though is this is for a game where such a thing should be common (the pc’s are a family)
Maybe if it was “When you force someone to listen to your advice…”? Or “When you offer your advice to someone who has just fucked up…”?
Silver Tongue, Coyote, MH:
You just can’t resist showing people
how wise and clever you are. When
someone’s in trouble, or being foolish,
tell them what you think they should
do. It’s up to you whether to give
honest advice or try to trick them. If
they choose not to do what you tell
them to, give them a String.
If they follow your advice and wish
they hadn’t, or vice versa, take 2
Strings on them and they mark
experience.
Such an insightful thread
To answer your question from yesterday, Robert Bohl – there is guidance in the book about how the Bear version gets used. It DOESN’T apply to mission stuff, so honestly the triggers don’t happen as much as you’d think they would. Especially since the book clarifies that it can’t just be you telling someone to do something but explicitly saying “that’s an order, dammit”.
I think it should be passive, as I’ve experienced a supposedly reclusive Savvyhead who ran about and interjected themselves in every scene and complained that noone ever asked them for advice.
It gives players and characters incentives to have characters approach an otherwise recluse, and but them with other’s problems. It would be horrible if the Savvyhead could actively go about giving +1 ongoing (and collect XP at will).